I was born on a special day in May. It was the 18th, and to be honest,
I didn’t know what to expect…they put me in a weird bed with a big light.
Ok, I’ll admit, I was scared. I didn’t know who my mom was, but I knew she
was close. Until she finally picked me up, I couldn’t wait to meet her.
She held me so tight. I knew she loved me.
I had been waiting to meet her for so long.
I had finally found my mom.
Right at that moment, I knew that my mom would love me. She whispered
to me, “I have been waiting for so long to meet you. And I love you.”
She called me “Mozzie,” and I called her “Mom.”
My dad walked in. He was skinny, but I instantly knew it was him.
He held me and called me “son” and “big guy.” I knew I was small,
but suddenly when my dad held me, my smallness didn’t matter.
My family was here, and I finally felt like I was at home.
Alex closes the book he wrote for his son. He looks down at 11-month-old
Mozzie, who now sleeps in his arms. Alex kisses him on the forehead, hugs
him a little tighter, and then gently places him in his crib. As he silently tip-
toes out of Mozzie’s bedroom, Brigetta takes a peek in to see her slumbering
son. She can’t help but smile at her life. Her husband, her son, her family.
In January 2012, they made the phone call that changed their lives. Brigetta
had just turned 22. Alex was 21.
“Yes, we want to adopt him.”
People warned them that they were making a mistake. You’re too young to
have a family, they’d say. Heck, you’re too young to even be married.
But 15 months later, as Brigetta and Alex sink into the couch while their
son sleeps, they know that those people were wrong.
***
Their love story sounds like a blockbuster romantic comedy. The synopsis
might go something like this:
“Their romance began at the ripe age of 15. Although homeschooled, Brig-
etta played tennis at Cody High School in the small town of Cody, Wyoming.
As the football team lined the fence to watch the girls play, a small, gawky
freshman named Alex decided to take a leap of faith and ask her out. She
said, ‘Yes.’ The rest is history.”
“I was just daring enough to cross the threshold to get to the girl,” Alex
says.
In actuality, Alex didn’t really ask Brigetta out on a first date. He just made
it extremely obvious that he liked her. Wherever she went, he’d go. He inten-
tionally became friends with her friends, so that they would “naturally” be in
the same places. Alex joined the tennis team. They went to church together.
They’d go to the movies at the local theater, which his dad happened to own.
Just in case they weren’t on the same page, Alex smoothly sent Brigetta a
text message that read, “Someone just asked me if we were boyfriend and girl-
friend, what should I say?”
“Yes…”
“I’d say our dating relationship was fun,” Alex says. “We dated with no
expectations…It was really the first serious relationship we had ever been in.
And it didn’t take a serious turn until we were 17-years-old.”
For the first two years, they spent a lot of time together, but it was always
with a group of people. Sure, they liked each other a lot, but they wanted to
make sure it didn’t get too serious, too fast.
Then, when they were both 17-years-old, Alex took Brigetta out on a date
and said, “I think I’m falling in love with you.”
He didn’t plan on saying that. But in that moment, on that particular date,
it just felt right.
“It just kind of came out,” Alex says. “Which is so in step with our relation-
ship. We hung out as friends and then, we just started telling people we were
boyfriend and girlfriend. There was no formal ‘Define the Relationship.’”
In that romantic moment, however, Brigetta sputtered out a very unroman-
tic, “Thank you.”
They laugh when they retell that story. They know how cheesy all of it
sounds, but that’s just how it happened.
Brigetta explains her response. “I hadn’t thought about it yet until he said
that…but a few months later, I said, ‘I love you’ too.”
They continued dating for two and a half more years while Alex attended
Northwest College to receive his Associate’s Degree. At the start of his sec-
ond year, in the fall of 2009, he knew he wanted to propose to Brigetta. While
Alex attended school, Brigetta spent some time in California vacationing
with her family. Life without Brigetta wasn’t fun. Too many lonesome nights
and chatter-free dinners proved difficult for him. And the longer she was
away, the more he realized how deep his love ran for her.
In January 2010, on Brigetta’s 20th birthday, 19-year-old Alex proposed
to her. This time, she said “yes” right away. But what should have been a
time marked by excitement and giddiness was overshadowed by doubt. Not
their own, but rather, that of others.
“When we talk about our relationship, our engagement was the hardest
period,” Alex says.
“Because people were telling us we were too young, [that] we didn’t know
what we were doing,” Brigetta adds.
Family members who supported their relationship suddenly became skept-
ical. Friends and distant relatives chimed in, telling them they were simply
too young to know what they were doing. They would frequently ask, what’s
the rush?
And they had a point. Alex didn’t have a job. They had no money. When
they searched for apartments, they could barely afford anything.
For the first couple months of their engagement, the two of them remained
steadfast in their decision. But as more and more people warned them of the
huge mistake they were making, it began wearing on them...especially on
Brigetta.
For example, when Brigetta attended a particular conference to hear an
acquaintance of hers whom she respected, speak. She sat in a crowd of thou-
sands, eager and excited to listen to what he had to say. She viewed him as
a fatherly figure, of sorts. As he began, he locked eyes with Brigetta.
“For people who get married between the ages of 18 to 24, four out of five
of them will get divorced in the first five years…”
Flushed, Brigetta tried sinking into her seat a little further. She felt like the
whole room knew he was talking to her.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe we are making a mistake...
She called Alex. She asked him if he was sure this was the right thing to do.
They were just two kids, after all.
But Alex reassured her. He wasn’t quite so sure himself—how could they
possibly know the future?—but he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his
life with Brigetta.
“I couldn’t argue with [the speaker]…He was a statistician,” Alex says.
“But I thought, ‘This guy has some issues.’ I didn’t say it out loud, but I just
kept reassuring her that even though we don’t know the future, I’m going to
try with everything I have to make sure this marriage will make it.”
“It was a lot of prayer and a lot of trying to assure her of things I wasn’t
even sure of,” he adds.
Alex was young. He didn’t exactly have tons of years of experience behind
him. But he had God. And God knew just what he needed.
“God affirmed me through my community of believers,” Alex remembers.
“My father. Through mentors. God’s role was very, very vital, but it was
mainly through people saying stuff like, ‘God doesn’t look at statistics...He’s
outside of the realm of our minds.’
“So for me to look at stats was stupid.”
On August 14, 2010, Alex and Brigetta wed. They became husband and
wife, and seven months of backlash and constant defense came to an abrupt
end. After the ceremony, the young newlyweds joyously ran through the
procession line as friends and family cheered, whistled, and threw seeds in
the air. They hopped into the car that would drive them to the hotel. As the
car door shut tight—phoomp—the sudden silence punched Brigetta in the
gut. And she started crying.
“There was just so much going on, so many emotions, and for all of it to be
done in that moment, it was a good thing, but it was just so overwhelming,”
Brigetta explains.
When they returned from their honeymoon, Alex and Brigetta packed their
bags and moved to California.
Within the same month of their wedding, Alex started attending Azusa Paci-
fic University in Azusa, California as a fulltime student to obtain a Bachelor’s
Degree in Biblical Studies. Brigetta worked part-time at a home furnishings
store while Alex went to school and worked 30-plus hours at a retail sunglass
shop.
At the end of his first year at APU, Alex applied for an internship at Marin-
ers Church, a megachurch with over 10,000 members in Irvine, California. He
didn’t hear back right away, so the two of them moved back to Wyoming for
the summer in 2011 and lived in Alex’s parents’ basement. While there, Alex
worked two jobs, waking up at 5 a.m. to mow the lawn at the local golf
course, then working with his dad at the movie theater. Meanwhile, Brigetta
worked full-time as a waitress. They worked to save enough money for Alex
to finish school in California.
Then, that July, Mariners Church called Alex back and hired him as an int-
ern. By the next month, they moved back to California and into a studio
apartment. Because the internship was unpaid, Alex worked full-time at AMC
Theaters. Meanwhile, he still attended APU as a full-time student.
“It was ridiculous,” he says. “And amidst all of it, I maintained a marriage.”
Alex and Brigetta didn’t have it easy. By all accounts, those that doubted
their decision to marry could have said, “I told you so.”
And perhaps they did. But God had one more thing under His belt.
***
In November 2011, just over a year since their wedding, Brigetta received a
phone call from a woman in New Mexico who was 18-years-old and pregnant.
She couldn’t keep the baby, but she wanted to give the child up for adoption.
She knew Brigetta’s mom, Patti, who had adopted three children of her own.
When the birth mom asked for her advice, Patti recommended Alex and Brig-
etta as possible candidates.
So here they were. A pregnant woman, barely an adult, and a 21-year-old
newlywed, on the phone, discussing the possibility of adoption.
When Brigetta got off the phone, she couldn’t help but get a little excited.
But she tried not to be. What if Alex didn’t feel the same way? After all, they
had previously decided to wait four or five years before having kids to make
sure they were financially stable. It had only been one year, and they were no-
where near that. Sure, Alex interned at one of the largest megachurches in
Orange County and even started a Junior High Ministry at one of the camp-
uses in Huntington Beach, but as an intern, that meant no paycheck.
So, when Alex readily accepted the possibility, they knew there was only
one possible explanation: God.
The simple fact that such a big decision came easily for both of them spoke
volumes in and of itself.
If God placed this baby into their lives, they knew He would provide. He
always did.
“We both had the same reaction, which was, ‘Why wouldn’t we?’” says Bri-
getta. “That was a complete change of heart from before, so we knew it was
a total God thing.”
Alex called Jared Kirkwood, his friend, boss, and mentor, for lunch. Jared
assumed Alex called to ask for a job he couldn’t give him because there
simply weren’t any available. But to his surprise, Alex simply wanted Jared’s
advice on adopting a baby.
"I think that helped him see something unique in me," Alex says.
In January 2012, after much prayer and counsel from mentors and family
members they trusted, they called the birth mom back and told her they
wanted to move forward with the adoption.
“We were 22—Alex was actually 21—when we were adopting, so you can
imagine, we got a lot of feedback on that, too,” Brigetta says. “From people
close to us as well as from people we didn’t know.”
In fact, when Mozzie was born, the nurse took it upon herself to warn the
birth mom of the potential mistake she was making. “Do you know what you
are doing? Do you see how young they are?” she asked.
“Whenever someone tells us we’re too young to do something, that’s kind
of God’s way of telling us, ‘You should do it,’” says Alex. “That was the
same for our marriage, that’s how Mozzie was, that’s how getting a job was…
it’s been like that for pretty much everything.”
At the start of the adoption process, the birth mom even hesitated because
of their young age. They were only a couple years older than her, after all.
But when she flew out to California to meet them, Alex and Brigetta squashed
all her fears.
Because, when you meet them, it’s easy to forget just how young they are.
Their peace, confidence, and surety of God and life make them seem 10
years older. As if they’ve done all of this before. Perhaps it's their immovable
faith in God’s provision. Or their work ethic and heart to make sure they’re
doing the best they can. Or their attitude that this is all just a part of their
life...nothing more, nothing less.
“It wasn’t until she flew out to California that she saw that Brigetta and I
were much older than our age would say,” Alex says. “The birth mom saw
something in us despite our situation. She saw our hearts and desire to parent
this little child.”
After months of paperwork, fingerprints, background checks, home studies,
baby classes, books, and school, it was finally time to meet their child. Alex
may not have had a job, and they weren’t exactly sure how everything
would work out, but God would provide. He always did.
Brigetta flew to New Mexico the first week of May in case the baby came
early. Alex joined her on May 9th, and together, they anxiously waited for
their son. Nine days later, on May 18, 2012, Mozzie Beaverson was born, and
after what seemed like eternity, Alex and Brigetta finally got to hold their son.
All six pounds and 14 ounces of him.
Right at that moment, I knew that my mom would love me. She whispered
to me, “I have been waiting for so long to meet you. And I love you.”
She called me “Mozzie,” and I called her “Mom.”
My dad walked in. He was skinny, but I instantly knew it was him.
He held me and called me “son” and “big guy.” I knew I was small,
but suddenly when my dad held me, my smallness didn’t matter.
My family was here, and I finally felt like I was at home.
The day after Mozzie was born, Alex wrote the following in his blog,
Skinnier Than Average:
“Moz came into this world yesterday, May 18, one week late...he’s
stubborn. This adoption has been long, tiresome, tear-filled, and yesterday, it
all became a reality. Unlike a non-adopting couple, Brigetta and I did not
have nine months to prepare and get attached. Instead, we were flooded with
paperwork, home studies, and questions of why we were adopting. Suddenly,
that entire process means nothing. What I mean is that it was worth it. Moz is
strong, eating a ton, and for some reason, he already knows who’s boss
(Brigetta-haha). I love this guy like crazy!”
A week later, the three of them flew back to California to be a family. And
just when it seemed like it couldn’t get much better than this, Alex got
another call. It was Mariners Church hiring him as a full-time youth pastor.
FOLLOW ALEX:
skinnierthanaverage.com
@alexbeaverson
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